Many of you think you know how baseball started.  You all think it may have happened in England or France in those silly years that can be referred to in hundreds:  Thirteen Hundred, Eighteen Hundred (if you think New Jersey possibly ever had any sort of history). Little did you know, the year baseball was invented can’t be measured.  At the time it was invented, nobody kept track of years. 

If you hadn’t guessed yet, cavemen invented baseball.  Not those silly Geico ones who get all pissy about things being easy.  No, baseball was invented by real cavemen with fancy Latin names that I’m too lazy to look up and who lived in caves, rather than swanky New York apartments fancier than those in Friends.

 It’s really quite simple.  Cavemen walked around with clubs.  You’ve all seen the pictures.  They’re big, club-like and very handy for swinging around. 

via www.catshoes.com

Cavemen also traveled in groups of nine.  Now, nine seems very arbitrary but it turns that nine is the optimal number of people living in a cave.  It provides the right amount of people for hunting, drawing weird things on walls and taking down a wooly mammoth.  Strangely, one mammoth only provided enough wool for nine shirts.  No cave’s shirts looked like any other cave’s due to cavemen’s lack of ability to build factories that could produce consistent goods.  Totally missed the boat on that one.  Also, mammoths had different color fur, so every cave’s shirts would be a different color.

via www.mccullagh.org

So you’d have nine cavemen with clubs and matching shirts wandering around.  They’d encounter another group of cavemen.  They’d know these new cavemen weren’t from their cave because the shirts were different colors and design.  Cavemen couldn’t count so they relied on the shirts.

Both groups would be going for the same food or other resource.  Chalk for cave drawings was pretty scarce back in the day.  Of course, they couldn’t share so there was a fight.  Being that both groups had clubs and were of equal numbers, it never went well for either side.  The group with the on average bigger guys would "win" the day, if you can call having have your face broken "winning."

One day, a smaller caveman picked up a rock as he moped away following the usual defeat.  In his angsty state, he threw it at the cavemen enjoying the grachunk (roughly translated as yellow chalk) he so desperately wanted.  He was drawing a nice sunset and needed some shading.

Back to the rock…so he throws it.  It hits one of the other cavemen.  All cavemen were strong.  So even a small guy was the size of an Urlacher.  This thrown rock was huge.  It knocked out the caveman.  The numbers were now reduced!  The loser cavemen now became the winner cavemen and got their grachunk!  Sadly, the sunset was a major disappointment.

via www.ufoevidence.org

But now the cavemen figured out a way to get around clubs.  A new dynamic existed for a while.  This was the rock-throwing era.  The caves with the best throwers now dominated. 

Again, one day, a group of cavemen got pinned by a posse with a few good throwers.  One of the throwers hit one of the clubs.  Clubs were still in use to subdue and tenderize meat.  The caveman got an idea.  When the next rock came, he actually swung at it.  It connected!  The first ever swing in the history of everything was a hit!  It went right back to the thrower and hit him.

This was a new dynamic:  throwing, swinging, trying not to get hit by the hit.   Some of the cavemen managed to hide behind objects that could stop a rock.  In cave-ese,  these objects were called "gruntrunk," which translates to "base." But not everyone could fit behind one base, so they needed another defense mechanism.

via images.travelpod.com

This one took a lot longer for the cavemen to figure out how to deal with, lack of factories and whatnot.  They realized their faces were catching the rocks.  So they tried catching with their hands.  But that still hurt, and often didn't leave much of their hand behind, so they wanted a cushion.  They found a use for excess mammoth meat.  That got messy…and it went bad quickly.  Long process short, they started using folded plant leaves (plants were a lot bigger in the day) and stuffing them with excess mammoth fur.   That made far less mess.  Now they’d invented rudimentary gloves and could stop the rocks.

But now they were back to the original stalemate because the groups could break down into specialties:  catching, throwing, rock smacking.  There was no advantage.  And cavemen were getting really tired of beating each other up.  It really was hurting their ability to take over the world.  Imagine how easy a caveman was to eat for a raptor after the cavemen had half his bones broken by large rocks.  There’s no chance.

 A new trend developed.  The cavemen realized how much they were hurting the future by constantly fighting over chalk, so rather than beating on each other, they would challenge the other group to a game of hurgrunt (translated as Rocksmash).  Each group would take their best thrower and get one shot at each of the opposing group’s members.  The swinger would get a chance to swing to defend himself.  They got a point if nobody caught the hit.  But if he missed, it hit him or it was caught, no point.  Then switch it up.  Whoever scored the most won (yay for Captain Obvious).  They’d get the food, grachunk or gloating rights. 

 Through time, their game evolved into using outs, multiple swings, running to the bases, giving more credit to rocks hit further, etc.   Not only did they create a game, baseball saved humanity!  They were tougher for raptors to eat since they weren’t all beat up, and raptors wouldn’t touch a group of 18.

 As you can see by this definitive, totally non-made up history, cavemen were the inventors of baseball.  This will be replacing the Wikipedia article shortly.

[Name of player] needs to go.  [Player] can't [play defense/pitch/hit/is a cancer].

Curse words.

The solution is to [trade for superstar player/trade for DeRo/DFA player/call up random minor leaguer].

[Stats of problem]

[Stats of solution]

[Value of intangibles that solution brings/cost intangibles problem has].

I know some people value [x stat] but really the problem with that is it doesn't take into account [y stat] which is OBVIOUSLY better and [problem player] has a [number representing y stat], which is [below league average/0/terrible for stereotyped position of player].

[Z stat] is also good.  [Solution player] has [z stat] in spades. [I choose to ignore y stat because it doesn't suit my goals or is a small sample size.]

Curse words.

If only [Jim Hendry/Lou/Coaching staff] did [their/his] job[s] we wouldn't be in this mess.

Curse words.

Other incoherent emotional mumbo-jumbo.

I will [stop watching/stop eating/drink more/throw myself off the ledge] if [Hendry/Lou] don't do as my clearly original and insightful post says they should.

Curse words.

Ron Santo for president.

Words to make this fit in as a fanpost because I think my opinion is of more value than the rules of the site.  This is also a new thought nobody has had in the past week so you must all see it. 

Curse words.

To be more convincing, I didn't use paragraphs.

Article

I always liked Marquis.  Thought he handled his role well.  Larger deal incoming?

Here's a brief clip:

The Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs have agreed in principle to a trade that would send righthander Jason Marquis to the Rockies in exchange for reliever Luis Vizcaino, according to the Denver Post

...

Marquis, 30, is scheduled to make $9.875 million next season while Vizcaino will be in the final campaign of a two-year, $8 million pact. According to the report, Chicago will pay $1 million of the money owed to Marquis.

With the addition of instant replay to the game, I got to thinking, what other things could change about baseball to make it better? 

So my question to you all is, what would you change about the game of baseball?  From the simplest rule change to something huge.  I'm just interested in your thoughts.  Some examples include Al's oft mentioned let the batter appeal to first base on a check swing.  Something a bit larger would be adding more to instant replay.  Or even something relating to umpires variant strike zones.  Or the infamous "technical balk" promoted at one time by a poster here.

Please, please, please:  If your answer is "nothing, the game is perfect" please don't post.  I'm interested in changes you'd make.  However, I don't wish to discourage you from arguing that a potential change may go too far or is a bit out of place (eg  "technical balk").

My change: I'd like to see something implemented to standardize the strikezone somewhat.  I hate how one pitch can be a strike and the next pitch, which is identical, is a ball.  I don't know how to implement it though.  I leave that to those of you who are far more informed than I, which is 90% of you.

I haven't been able to watch much of the games lately but when I have turned on WGN I've noticed a couple of disturbing trends.

First, what's with this new logo?  It's ugly and pretty creepy.

Second, why are they giving air times in east/pacific times and no longer central? 

Anybody have any info on this or is it all an attempt to make WGN a more successful national station?  Just like TBS dumped the Braves to become national, is WGN trying to do that? 

No, sir, I don't like it.

The umpire from the Milton Bradley incident has been suspended.  http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3037237

I know Al and others have talked about Umps being or trying to become part of the show (I can't help but think of that ump this past weekend with the highly exaggerated strike call).  

I have several questions.

1.  How often does this sort of suspension for an ump happen?  Are there other ramifications for umpires in their behavior?
   
2.  Should it happen more often?
   
3.  Will this help the complaint of umps trying to be the show?

My first "diary" and it's more of a question for those more knowledgeable than I.

Does anybody have any updates on Mark Prior?  Or links as to where to find information about him?  I'm just curious as to how he's doing.

I like to think someday he'll come back and be effective.  If it's not as a Cub, I'd still watch him.